December 14, 1999

put on (the) dog

I'd like to know where the expression put on the dog came from.

Put on (the) dog is an expression that means ‘to make a display of wealth or importance, especially by dressing stylishly and flashily’. It’s similar in meaning to the later expression put on the ritz.

Put on (the) dog dates back to American college slang of the 1860’s and is recorded in Lyman H. Bagg’s Four Years at Yale (1871): “Dog, style, splurge. To put on dog is to make a flashy display, to cut a swell.” At about the same time, the related adjective doggy was a popular slang term meaning ‘attractively stylish; costly; fancy’. One of the more implausible suggestions for the origin of hotdog is that imported German franks were called “doggy hots”--they were fancier than regular sausages.

Put on (the) dog is possibly connected to the fact that noble or wealthy ladies had lapdogs as pets; these dogs were small enough to put on the lap. The silky-haired Maltese dog was a pampered pet of the noble ladies of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. Archaeologists have found remains of the Pekingese in tombs from 2000 years ago. This dog was thought to be an incarnation of the Chinese Door Guardian god; the dog represented wealth and became the favored pet of the upper classes. In the 1860’s, Queen Victoria was given lapdogs as gifts, and they became very popular in England. Possibly the expression put on (the) dog was not only connected to pampered lapdogs--newly rich ladies may have wanted to show off any fancy dog by putting it on a leash or wearing it in a sleeve.

Ted Shapiro, who worked as Sophie Tucker’s piano accompanist in vaudeville, wrote a popular rag called “Putting on the Dog.” Surprisingly, this expression is still used occasionally, as in describing a fancy wedding reception or a costly purchase. And it is alive and well in humorous (literal) contexts, which shows that most people know what the figurative expression means. For example, at a recent dog show, the owners were described as putting on the dog or “putting on heirs (airs).” I also found a Web site called Putting on the Dog--it sells fancy and costly canine apparel.

Carol